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Watching On the Prowl and reading the comments got me thinking about how vidding fandom (which is mostly female) portrays violence against women. Because while I agree with the people saying that the vid would be much more disturbing if it was all female characters, I do also like a lot of vids with violence against women in them.
So I went through my vids (mostly live action, with a few AMVs) and looked at those that featured significant violence against women, and I ended up with a couple of different categories for the ways it's portrayed. This is only a cross section of the vids I have seen and liked, and may not be representative (especially of people who don't like femslash), if your experience or opinion is different I'd be curious to hear about it.
Warning: these vids all contain violence against women! Some of it is pretty graphic and/or sexual, I'll try to remember to warn for anything very bad but may miss some.
The categories are roughly ordered by increasing positivity towards the violence they portray. There's a lot of crossover and it's all incredibly subjective. I'm not 100% happy with how I've organised everything but past a certain point I just really didn't feel like looking at violent images any more.
These are all deliberately confronting. I only chose vids where violence is shown in an overwhelmingly negative light and the vidder refuses to engage with the given narrative much at all, since a great many of the vids on this page have some critique of the original source.
Violence against female characters as motivation for the character(s) the vid actually cares about. Problematic, but for all these vids the vidder is just presenting the narrative as given by the original source. (Well, I haven't seen Southland, but that's my assumption)
This is not a very popular category, since women who have horrible things happen to them and don't fight back don't generally make for very satisfying vids. But it's worth highlighting if only as a counterpoint to the other categories.
These wallow in the pain a female character experiences, but she isn't a passive victim.
In these the violence so universal that those who experience don't come across as victims, just people in a violent world. (That's the way it feels to me anyway)
These present the violence in a more positive light than for example the Faith/Buffy and Spike/Buffy vids above.
I'm not sure if the lack of het ship examples is because noone makes them or because I tend to avoid them, there must be some for "Mr and Mrs Smith" etc. I also couldn't find any happy revenge vids which were primarily about attacking women other than "The Reckoning", and I can't think of any "woman defeats female archnemesis" stories off the top of my head ("Man defeats female archnemesis with violence" is not a genre I can see myself being very enthusiastic about). But I'm sure there must be some.
I nearly had a note saying that I couldn't find anything matching this description, then had a proper look and found some.
Some happy vids focussing on women with no violence at all (this was surprisingly hard to compile, especially since I already made a "happy" tag after a friend pointed out that all the vids I recced were angsty or violent(*). Actually, I guess that makes it unsurprising…)
And finally: One Girl Revolution which does have lots of violence from women, but none towards them. Also contains hugs.
And if you like any of these vids, tell the vidders!
Once again, this is very much biased by my tastes and milieu. Specifically, I'm very much in the English speaking lj/dw part of online fanvid fandom, and that's all I can even begin to generalise about. Also, I don't have any deep thesis or anything, and am only looking at what vidders do rather than making any statement about why, or what they should be doing (and I'll note that I like all of these vids, though sometimes with caveats. Cataloguing the vids that show violence towards women in ways I dislike would be interesting but much more difficult and unpleasant).
I don't want to go into the way violence towards women is portrayed in the source, that's a very large and much more depressing topic. But it's worth saying: popular culture has a disturbing fascination with violence against women portrayed in creepy misogynistic ways, and vids by women or created in woman dominated spaces are a way for us to recontextualise those images. Or not.
I think vidders do try and avoid showing violence towards women unnecessarily. There a bunch of characters, such as Claire from Heroes, who experience HEAPS of violence in the source but comparatively little in the vids featuring them. A lot of vids I remembered as showing violence against women in fact just showed images around the violence (the attacker looking threatening, the woman looking a bit bloodied but unbowed etc) and left it implied.
It also depends on the message of the vid: for example, in Battlestar there is an apparently(**) very significant Starbuck/Lee moment during a boxing match between the two characters. In the positive Starbuck vid Cuz I can we only see Starbuck hit Lee, but in Wicked Game which is from the POV of Dee (Lee's wife) and much less celebratory of canon we see Lee hit Starbuck.
There's a lot of Joss Whedon, which isn't surprising given how much he likes poking at the issues and imagery around violence and women (plus I'm a fan of his stuff). Also a comparatively large amount of Battlestar Galactica, Sarah Connor Chronicles and Legend of the Seeker given that I haven't seen much of those shows.
I wish I had more AMVs so I could do more of a comparison of the fandoms, but I get a LOT more recs for live action vids and am too lazy to try very many at random. Anyway, I would say that AMV fandom on the whole takes violence and sexual assault MUCH more lightly than fanvid fandom. This is presumably related to favid fandom being more female dominated, though note that not all the fanvids in this list were made by women, nor all the AMVs by men. There's also the fact that anime comes from a very different culture than the English speaking countries that produce most of the sources for the live action fanvids I tend to watch.
(*)A different question for another day: am I the only person who likes darkness in vids but tends to prefer happy fic?
(**)Battlestar is one of those shows I enjoy entirely through vids :D
So I went through my vids (mostly live action, with a few AMVs) and looked at those that featured significant violence against women, and I ended up with a couple of different categories for the ways it's portrayed. This is only a cross section of the vids I have seen and liked, and may not be representative (especially of people who don't like femslash), if your experience or opinion is different I'd be curious to hear about it.
Warning: these vids all contain violence against women! Some of it is pretty graphic and/or sexual, I'll try to remember to warn for anything very bad but may miss some.
The categories are roughly ordered by increasing positivity towards the violence they portray. There's a lot of crossover and it's all incredibly subjective. I'm not 100% happy with how I've organised everything but past a certain point I just really didn't feel like looking at violent images any more.
Critique of the source and it's portrayal of violence against women
These are all deliberately confronting. I only chose vids where violence is shown in an overwhelmingly negative light and the vidder refuses to engage with the given narrative much at all, since a great many of the vids on this page have some critique of the original source.
- Women's work Supernatural.
- Stay awake Multifandom. Women, pregnancy, medical violence.
- Fever Twilight.
- Rake it in Dollhouse.
Women in refrigerators
Violence against female characters as motivation for the character(s) the vid actually cares about. Problematic, but for all these vids the vidder is just presenting the narrative as given by the original source. (Well, I haven't seen Southland, but that's my assumption)
- Vibrate Dexter. Women's dead bodies as a bonding gift between serial killers. Quite violent.
- God says Nothing Back Supernatural. Season 1 of Supernatural.
- Down by the water Southland. Murder victim motivates a female cop.
Woman is victim figure but the vid focusses on her POV to some extent
This is not a very popular category, since women who have horrible things happen to them and don't fight back don't generally make for very satisfying vids. But it's worth highlighting if only as a counterpoint to the other categories.
- Tear you apart Firefly. Not much literal violence towards women, but there is a LOT implied by the lyrics and juxtaposition of (often quite graphic) images.
Woman starts out as a victim, fights back
- Bale Out Dollhouse. Quite violent, lots of swearing. I'm oversimplifying the message a bit.
- Revenge Multi (female revenge exploitation films) Contains sexual violence and gore.
Woman as woobie or tragic figure
These wallow in the pain a female character experiences, but she isn't a passive victim.
- Superstar Perfect Blue. Contains explicit sexual violence and nudity. (nb this is an AMV)
- DLZ Sarah Connor Chronicles. There's a lot of vids like this for the fandom.
- Devil said Merlin: Gwen and Morgana. Violence towards women more implied than shown. Nudity.
- Rabbit hearted girl Supernatural. Jo and Ellen.
- Evil Angel Angel. Darla and Angel.
- Doll parts Legend of the Seeker. Denna.
- Damaged Heroes. Peter and Claire. What I find interesting is that we see more images of Peter experiencing violence even though canon provides more of Claire.
- Superstar Buffy. Buffy/Faith. Violence as sexual subtext.
- One last time Buffy. Spike/Buffy. Sexualised violence. I'm not sure if I find this creepier than the previous vid because Spike is a guy or because the subtext is more text.
Part of a generally violent narrative
In these the violence so universal that those who experience don't come across as victims, just people in a violent world. (That's the way it feels to me anyway)
- Bachelorette Buffy. All the men and all the women. Very much about gendered violence, but it didn't feel like it fit the other categories.
- Take me to the Hospital Buffy. People on Buffy get injured a lot...
- Goodnight moon Heroes. The weird relationships between people and families.
- Karma Police Battlestar Galactica. The final four.
- Runs in the Family True Blood. Jessica and her family.
Violence as happy-ish shippy subtext or revenge
These present the violence in a more positive light than for example the Faith/Buffy and Spike/Buffy vids above.
I'm not sure if the lack of het ship examples is because noone makes them or because I tend to avoid them, there must be some for "Mr and Mrs Smith" etc. I also couldn't find any happy revenge vids which were primarily about attacking women other than "The Reckoning", and I can't think of any "woman defeats female archnemesis" stories off the top of my head ("Man defeats female archnemesis with violence" is not a genre I can see myself being very enthusiastic about). But I'm sure there must be some.
- The Reckoning Multifandom. See category heading :D
- Learn to crawl Battlestar Galactica. Starbuck/Kat. Not sure this quite counts.
- Invincible Burn Notice. Michael/Fiona. Way more violence towards men and Michael in particular but the best I could find with a het ship.
- Come out and play Multifandom. Various combinations of characters with UST-laden violence, what's interesting is that the m/m, m/f and f/f relationships are all shown in pretty much the same way.
Humour
I nearly had a note saying that I couldn't find anything matching this description, then had a proper look and found some.
- Gossip Folks Dubbie The Middleman. Very light happy slapstick.
- I think I'm a Clone Now Multi. More angst and pain than actual violence. I still found it a bit disconcerting.
- AMV Hell 3 Multi. The AMV Hell series are humourous shorts relying on juxtaposition of images and audio, often using violence and other offensive content. AMV fandom is a very different place to fanvid fandom! Three has the highest ratio of funny:offensive in my opinion but…yeah.
And if you need and antidote to all that…
Some happy vids focussing on women with no violence at all (this was surprisingly hard to compile, especially since I already made a "happy" tag after a friend pointed out that all the vids I recced were angsty or violent(*). Actually, I guess that makes it unsurprising…)
- Happy Girl Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tara.
- Whatever it takes Bend it like Beckham.
- Here comes the sun Misc Miyazaki films.
- Walk the line March of the Penguins. It has lady penguins, it counts :)
And finally: One Girl Revolution which does have lots of violence from women, but none towards them. Also contains hugs.
And if you like any of these vids, tell the vidders!
Some thoughts
Once again, this is very much biased by my tastes and milieu. Specifically, I'm very much in the English speaking lj/dw part of online fanvid fandom, and that's all I can even begin to generalise about. Also, I don't have any deep thesis or anything, and am only looking at what vidders do rather than making any statement about why, or what they should be doing (and I'll note that I like all of these vids, though sometimes with caveats. Cataloguing the vids that show violence towards women in ways I dislike would be interesting but much more difficult and unpleasant).
I don't want to go into the way violence towards women is portrayed in the source, that's a very large and much more depressing topic. But it's worth saying: popular culture has a disturbing fascination with violence against women portrayed in creepy misogynistic ways, and vids by women or created in woman dominated spaces are a way for us to recontextualise those images. Or not.
I think vidders do try and avoid showing violence towards women unnecessarily. There a bunch of characters, such as Claire from Heroes, who experience HEAPS of violence in the source but comparatively little in the vids featuring them. A lot of vids I remembered as showing violence against women in fact just showed images around the violence (the attacker looking threatening, the woman looking a bit bloodied but unbowed etc) and left it implied.
It also depends on the message of the vid: for example, in Battlestar there is an apparently(**) very significant Starbuck/Lee moment during a boxing match between the two characters. In the positive Starbuck vid Cuz I can we only see Starbuck hit Lee, but in Wicked Game which is from the POV of Dee (Lee's wife) and much less celebratory of canon we see Lee hit Starbuck.
There's a lot of Joss Whedon, which isn't surprising given how much he likes poking at the issues and imagery around violence and women (plus I'm a fan of his stuff). Also a comparatively large amount of Battlestar Galactica, Sarah Connor Chronicles and Legend of the Seeker given that I haven't seen much of those shows.
I wish I had more AMVs so I could do more of a comparison of the fandoms, but I get a LOT more recs for live action vids and am too lazy to try very many at random. Anyway, I would say that AMV fandom on the whole takes violence and sexual assault MUCH more lightly than fanvid fandom. This is presumably related to favid fandom being more female dominated, though note that not all the fanvids in this list were made by women, nor all the AMVs by men. There's also the fact that anime comes from a very different culture than the English speaking countries that produce most of the sources for the live action fanvids I tend to watch.
(*)A different question for another day: am I the only person who likes darkness in vids but tends to prefer happy fic?
(**)Battlestar is one of those shows I enjoy entirely through vids :D
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If you like AMVs then it's worth signing up to AMV.org, but I can understand not bothering for just the one vid.
Here's all the vids I've tagged "happy", you can find individual fandoms on the sidebar.
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